From the Liveblog of
Saturday, February 3, 2024
Russian police briefly detain 20 reporters covering protest by wives of soldiers fighting in Ukraine
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Russian police have released about 20 reporters, including an AFP journalist, who had been detained at a protest in Moscow by wives of men mobilized to fight in Ukraine.
The women have staged rare protests outside the Kremlin walls for weeks — an uncomfortable movement for the authorities that has so far not been put down.
Police had detained the group of Russian and foreign reporters — all men — and took them to a police station earlier on Saturday.
The group had been arrested outside Red Square as they covered and filmed the women, who are demanding their partners be brought home from Ukraine.
Video footage showed police bringing reporters wearing yellow press vests to police vans.
The reporters, including the AFP journalist, were released several hours later.
The wives of mobilized men have been staging protests outside the Kremlin walls every weekend for weeks, symbolically bringing red flowers to a tomb of an unknown soldier.
While Moscow has orchestrated a huge crackdown on dissent at home, the women’s movement has so far gone unpunished.
The AFP journalist who was detained says around 40 people took part in the protest.
An online livestream posted by the women’s group shows participants walking together through central Moscow.
“We are here as the women who need their husbands,” says one of the women in the livestream.
The Times of Israel Community.